4. Affiliate marketing: Getting paid to tell people what you like and showing them where to get it. As a Dad, I tried 3 high chairs before finding the “Bumbo.” Now if I blog about the Bumbo and link to it to my Amazon account, and someone buys it, I can earn a commission. This is also a great way to build money over time, but it requires new content, staying top of mind and driving lots of traffic.
I have already come up with 50 ways that a management company can screw you for profit without you ever knowing(or not finding out for awhile). Did you have an inspection before you made an offer on the property? Do you have a picture of the property you bought? How do you know if that picture shows the house you actually own? or if it even hows the ‘current’ state of the house you own?
Speaking from our own experience, you can’t be a passive McDonald’s franchisee. Every McDonald’s potential franchisee will need to complete at least thousands of hours of training before he/she would be approved to acquire a franchise and only if he/she has the financial resources to acquire a franchise. It could take years before one would get a single store franchise. Until the franchisee eventually has acquired multiple stores and established his/her own management team, the franchisee would have to put his/her nose to the grindstone and work his/her ass off every day. I won’t call it a passive investment by any stretch of imagination.

Amazing that you saved between 50% to 75% living in NYC…I think that is one thing holding me back…the cost of living here. I’d like to invest in real estate, but I can barely afford to buy a place to live. I don’t need a large income to be happy, but I probably do need an income to support living in NYC as we don’t plan on leaving. The only thing I’m doing at the moment is saving in my 401K, IRA and a I dabble in stocks and P2P lending.

Well written piece, but I question the core premise. Why the fascination with maximizing “income” (passive or otherwise). Shouldn’t the goal simply be to maximize long-term after tax growth of your entire portfolio? If this takes the form of dividend paying stocks, so be it. But what if small caps are poised to outperform? What if you want to take Buffet’s or Bogle’s advice and just buy a broad market index like the S&P 500, (no matter what the dividend because you’ll just have it automatically reinvested to avoid the transaction fees).

7. Royalties: the creation of music, books, inventions, machines, patents. A royalty is something you have sold or created and put it on a platform that you do not run and then receive compensation based on when the item is purchased or used. Most of us do not have the potential to quickly create royalty streams. Not to say you couldn’t specialize in something and write an ebook or if you are musically inclined you couldn’t write a song, but to create true residual income, that is going to take a lot of effort and skill. This is the purest form of passive residual income, if you can achieve it.

I do agree that a few of these ideas are not bad, but for me the problem with some of these platforms has been that I’m not from the USA. So, I can’t operate there. It’s a really interesting possibility to get some extra bucks from doing what you would do either way, like shopping. One of the best projects so far that I have seen is FluzFluz. It’s simple and really easy to use for everyone who uses Uber, Amazo, or other apps. The best part of all is that you can get some passive income – not just from your own purchases, but from other people’s as well. I hope one day it will make it here to your list. I think it’s worth it to check out.
If an investor puts $500,000 into a candy store with the agreement that the owners would pay the investor a percentage of earnings, that would be considered passive income as long as the investor does not participate in the operation of the business in any meaningful way other than placing the investment. The IRS states, however, that if the investor did help manage the company with the owners, the investor's income could be seen as active since the investor provided "material participation."
Secondly – and this is just quibbling – I’d change that risk score. The risk of private equity is incredibly high and should be considerably riskier than bonds! You are providing a typically very large amount of capital to one business that you agree to have no control over, and the success or failure of that business over a locked, predefined term determines your return. And in the few deals I’ve negotiated for clients, my experience has been that there are often management fees, performance fees, etc. that may cut into your potential gains, anyway. You’re putting a lot of eggs in one basket, and promising an omelet or two to the management no matter what. You really need to be confident that you found the next Uber before you take this giant risk!
Awesome article…if this does not give somebody a clear roadmap, they probably were never going to get there in the first place! I’m kind of like you trying to figure out where to place “new” money and maturing CD’s in this low interest environment. Rates have to go up eventually…I dream of the days again where you can build a laddered bond portfolio paying 8%. I plan for a 5.5% blended rate of return, with big downside protection.

1) Save Like Nobody Owes You Anything. Passive income starts with savings. Without a healthy amount of savings, nothing works. Your overall “Money Strength” will be an F- if you do not build a financial nut. In our current low interest rate environment, you must save even more than before. It’s important to also realize that the savings I am referring to is AFTER-tax savings. You need to save money after contributing to your 401k and IRAs since you can’t touch pre-tax retirement accounts without a penalty until 59.5. Ideally everyone should max out their pre-tax retirement funds first, but if you don’t have enough funds and want to retire earlier then a decision to have more accessible post tax money will still work.

Dividends made sense 40 years ago as a relatively simple rule of thumb, but after all the work done by John Bogle with index investing, and academics with Monte Carlo sims and the 4% rule, dividend investing just isn’t the simplest, cleanest way to invest or receive passive income anymore. It’s actually significantly more risky compared to index investing, because dividend companies are a much smaller share of the total global economy compared to the broader indices.

Successful YouTubers choose a theme for their channel—ranging from humorous commentary to gardening. As you acquire subscribers to your channel, your number of views becomes more consistent, which in turn grows your residual income. While you’ll need to produce regular videos to maintain your following, a couple hours of filming and editing pales in comparison to the revenue you can generate with minimum effort.

Residual income is the best model for money generation. Once you master and build up one avenue, you can devote your time and money into another avenue. Eventually you start reaping the benefits of multiple residual income avenues. Enabling you to have complete financial and time freedom. I recommend to all people to build these types of asset models as they can greatly improve their life.